Big Bird stands guard over the alleged zinnias. (They all came home from the garden store months ago, labeled as the same orange zinnias, but they grew into two distinct flower varieties, neither of which looks like the zinnias I expected.)

I love the morning glories, which grow like weeds — but never in the places I try to plant them.

Marigolds are joined by chrysanthemums.

And above it all towers the white pine that Macy planted when she was in first or second grade, one of the tiny slips of trees sent home on Arbor Day.

I remember being taught, when I was a child, how long it takes for trees to grow, and thinking that one could never plant a tree and live long enough to see it grow tall. Time moves more slowly for the young.

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Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) provides health care for 9 million children and 375,000 pregnant women in working families who make too much money to qualify for Medicaid, but not enough for private insurance. Working families like Bob Cratchit’s family. You remember Bob Cratchit. He worked for old Ebenezer Scrooge, and he didn’t make much […]

Old Scrooge, before he repented, thought the poor and disabled might as well die and reduce the surplus population. He would have loved this tax bill, which is likely to reduce the surplus population by, among other things, reducing access to chemotherapy for Medicare patients with cancer. The tax bill also eliminates tax deductions for […]

If you are confused about the “tax cut” bill, you are not alone. I took two semesters of tax law way back in the day, and I do my own taxes every year, so here’s my explanation of just one of the ways the “tax reform” cuts taxes but actually leaves you paying more.

Want to open the faucet and see brown, gritty, unsafe water? Move to St. Joseph, Louisiana, where the town’s water system is irreparably fouled by decades of neglect. The impoverished town is not alone, according to the Center for Investigative Reporting: “St. Joseph, population 1,029, is one of thousands of small towns across the country […]

UPDATE WITH CORRECTION 10/6/17 – see below: Yom Kippur is a day of fasting and repentance. It is a day to reflect on what we have done wrong in the past year, and to ask forgiveness. Unless you are the president of the United States. Then it is a day to attack anyone who dares […]